


The Mothers Take Their Tea

by purple01_prose



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Aged-Up Character, F/F, Femmeslash February, kind of, quiet love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple01_prose/pseuds/purple01_prose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tea and one-sided conversation is only the beginning of their ritual, but it is comforting, and Seraphina finds she doesn't want it any other way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mothers Take Their Tea

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

                                                                                                            _Leo Tolstoy_

Seraphina settles into the chair Katherine had made especially for her, watching ‘Mother Goose’ hum to herself as she took the kettle off the stove, steeping the tea that Santoff Clausen grows.

 

Seraphina sniffs the air—rose hips and chamomile. She flicks her fingers and the tea strengthens, allowing Katherine to return to the table with the tray, white-and-cherry-blossom patterned teapot with two matching cups. As Katherine sets it down, she takes the teapot and cups off the tray onto the table, followed by the dishes of rose honey, cream, and crushed rock sugar. Seraphina takes her tea very deliberately, a fact Katherine is aware of, as Katherine pours just enough into the cup, followed by half of a teaspoon of rock sugar and a dash of cream.

 

Katherine herself takes a teaspoon of rose honey, and they sit back in their chairs quietly, sipping their steaming tea with care. Outside, under the protecting branches of Big Root, they hear the children shriek with laughter in the summer sun. It is a gorgeous day, but Seraphina knows storm clouds are on the horizon.

 

“How’s your father?” Katherine asks quietly after that first cup, refilling her tea as she looks at Seraphina.

 

Seraphina shrugs with an upward flit of her eyebrows. Pitch is—pardon the pun—a shadow of his formal self, since he realized the daughter he mourned was still alive. He is still roaming, Fearlings and nightmares in his train, but now he is no longer hunting children actively.

 

It is the best of what they can expect of him, so Seraphina does nothing.

 

Katherine nods once, putting rose honey into her tea. “Ombric is fine,” she tells Seraphina. “He’s found a new spell book that he thinks may be Norse in origin, and he’s excited. Bunnymund and North have decided to meet only rarely, though they collaborate on Christmas chocolates and Easter gifts together. Nightlight is searching for the Sandman, about something I’m not fully aware of.”

 

Seraphina nods, holding out her cup for Katherine to refill. She likes Nightlight, he is a good friend to Katherine, but where they may have thought once to be more than that, no longer.

 

It is for the best. Nightlight is a creature of moonbeams and starlight; Katherine is flesh and bone.

 

Seraphina very carefully says nothing on the subject of Jackson Overland Frost, her newest spirit child, currently teasing and taunting her father. She could stop him—both hims—but Pitch’s flustering bewilderment is far too precious to her, and her memories of her father’s smile are shrouded in the mists of time and memory.

 

“And Toothiana has offered to train me in the ways of the sword, since fighting with a knife requires my enemies to get much closer to me,” Katherine finishes, putting that dash of cream in Seraphina’s cup and pushing it towards her.

 

Seraphina sits upright, eyeing Katherine critically.

 

Katherine knows what that means. “Toothiana and Diana of the Hunt are together, Sera,” Katherine sighs.

 

Seraphina settles back down, like a proud bird un-fluffing her feathers. She rolls her shoulders lightly, watching Katherine.

 

They have a rite, twice a year, on their important dates. The first one is Katherine’s birthday, and the second one is the day of the year Seraphina was told by Tsar Lunar that her father had been possessed by Fearlings and was lost.

 

Both are days they mourn.

 

They have their tea, Seraphina pets Kailash, and then they put aside their roles, along with their robes. Katherine drops ‘Mother Goose,’ and Seraphina lets the weather and the world do as it will for a few hours. The world goes right on spinning, so she regrets nothing at all.

 

Seraphina finishes her tea and flicks her eyes over Katherine, who smiles softly. Seraphina pushes her chair away from the table and Katherine very carefully arranges herself on Seraphina’s lap, running gentle fingers through Seraphina’s loose hair.

 

Seraphina leans into the touch, before rising up to kiss Katherine gently. Katherine twines their tongues together, leaning against Seraphina’s chest.

 

Carefully, very carefully, Katherine leans back, picking up Seraphina’s hand, pressing her lips to Seraphina’s knuckles, laving in the hollows between each knuckle. Seraphina allows her fingers to extend and Katherine follows the line of Seraphina’s fingertips, sucking on the calluses.

 

Seraphina, like Katherine, works for a living.

 

Kailash hoots softly, taking off from the branches of the tree.

 

Kailash was wonderful at leaving them alone.

 

Their rite is always concluded by nightfall, when Katherine falls asleep in her bed and Seraphina covers her with her blankets, brushing a kiss over Katherine’s forehead before departing to the clouds above.

 

They meet at other times and other places, but these two days out of the calendar year are the times when they’re most keenly aware of their status, and bitter with it. Those are the times that they most need each other.

 

Seraphina looks at the sleeping Katherine, tucked into her blankets, and feels her heart quirk with love. Some may have epic stories of their love, of wars fought in their names, of ships that have sailed.

 

No one will ever tell such stories of Mother Nature and Mother Goose. Katherine is more content to write the story than be the story, and Mother Nature, by her very eponym, is capricious and unpredictable.

 

Still, as Seraphina bends to kiss Katherine’s forehead one last time, they would not have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, until proven otherwise, my headcanon is that Seraphina doesn't speak, but unlike Sandy, she speaks with body gestures, and it takes time to get to know what she's saying.


End file.
